[This
review was published in the Fall 2011 issue of The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, pp.
384-393.]

Book Review

White Identity: Racial Consciousness in
the 21st Century

Jared
Taylor

New Century Books, 2011

The title White Identity is startling.Nobody knows that better than the author, Jared Taylor, who writes that
“most non-whites take pride in their race and cultivate racial consciousness…
Whites do the reverse: They condemn white racial pride and shun anyone who
would work for explicitly ‘white goals.’”

To fly in the face of so engrained a
taboo is to invite ostracism.Two
literary agents tried without success to find a U.S. publisher, and it is
predictable that few booksellers will carry the book and that a great many
people, whites among them, will turn away from it with repugnance.

Why, then, has Taylor chosen a title
that so directly challenges the taboo?One can surmise that it is because he hopes that a dispassionate,
data-drive discussion of the idea that lies at the center of the challenge that
now so threatens the continued existence of Western civilization will force the
subject out into the open.By
confronting it head-on, without histrionics or even a hint of well-justified
outrage, he hopes to cause a paradigmatic displacement of the prevailing
mentality.If the incubus that presently
lies so heavily upon the body of white self-perception can be dislodged, even
ever so slightly, maybe the body can take a deep new breath.In part, this hope is an act of desperation.There may be insufficient life left under the
incubus to allow such a recuperation.But Taylor knows that the longer whites embrace their moral
self-abnegation, the surer it becomes that they will disappear, swallowed up
and displaced by ethnic and racial groups that do proudly trumpet their right to exist.

What is remarkable about Taylor is
that he writes on a subject so existentially vital, and so super-charged with
vitriol, with the always-calm demeanor and patient collection of facts that we
associateideally with the best of
scholars.It is evident that he cares
deeply about his subject, to which he is devoting his life as an author and as
editor of American Renaissance; but
he has never, so far as this reviewer knows, shown any propensity to rant about
it.“Be objective, and let the facts
speak for themselves” must be the motto of his quite remarkable
temperament.(That he is also courageous
in fighting so lonely and despised a battle is obvious, and is another
characteristic of someone who chooses to be truly free mentally.)

And it is well that he allows the
facts to do the talking.It’s
predictable that the challenge will be written off as “racist” in any event,
especially with the title Jared has chosen.The refusal to consider it will be given extra moral sanction, however,
if people find any reason at all to consign the work to the “kook” or “moral
degenerate” categories that will so readily come to their minds.Taylor’s careful scholarship will take this
away if they pay attention to the actual content of his book, and opens the
door to that rare breed of reader who welcomes the honest expression of ideas
and who has even the slightest reason to think that the subject of “white
identity” is one that deserves consideration.Taylor expects this sort of reader to become more numerous: realistically
contemplating the role of force and counter-force, he writes that “it is only a
matter of time before this [black and other ethnic consciousness] gives rise to
an increasingly explicit white racial consciousness.”This would seem to make sense when we remember
that in the 1930s and ’40s a number of leading people left the Communist
movement precisely because they were “mugged by reality.”Minds do change, for some at least, when
facts come to stare them too starkly in the face.It remains to be seen whether the moral
smugness that currently imprisons white Americans in a mindscape of guilt and
self-satisfaction will prove too strong a barrier to any such realization.

Taylor has clearly wanted to highlight
the issue of “white identity,” but a reading of the book as a whole shows that
the subtitle, “Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century” is a more
accurate description of the book’s contents.He devotes long chapters, with prodigious but captivating detail, to
“Black racial consciousness,” “Hispanic racial consciousness,” and “Asian
racial consciousness” – as well as to that of whites.Readers who wish they had an ability
comprehensively to recall the facts, episodes, attitudes and ideas that have
comprised race relations in the United States will find that Taylor has done
the work for them.Without losing its
readability, his book is encyclopedic and profoundly informative.

About blacks’ racial solidarity,
Taylor cites chapter and verse in support of his generalization that “for many
minorities, race or ethnicity is central to their identity.”He gives many examples of black
separatism.There are “hundreds of
organizations explicitly for blacks.”In
bookstores, there is an “African-American” book category, and such a thing as
“ghetto lit.”Schools offer classes in
“black history” (and we know that“Black
History Month” is now well established).Taylor tells of polls that show large numbers of blacks agreeing on
beliefs that seem outlandish to whites: that O. J. Simpson was actually
innocent of murder; that HIV/AIDS result from a plot to kill blacks; that the
CIA imported cocaine to distribute to blacks; that whites are incapable of
understanding black culture.While white
support for President Barack Obama dwindled during his first year in office,
Obama’s approval rating among blacks, already so high as to show racial
solidarity, “rose from 90 to 91 percent.”The bloc- approval rose even further to 94 percent after the second
year.

One would think that the pattern would
be different with Hispanics, since for the most part they are new to the United
States and have no legacy of slavery.We
know, however, that there is a substantial activist literature that has long
worked hard to create a “Latino” consciousness that merges Mexicans with all other
immigrants from south of the border.That activism has not sought a celebration of being in the United States
or of “becoming an American”; rather, as Taylor tells us, Hispanics have “been
quick to assume the black mantle of victimhood.”The long-standing American ideal of
assimilation into American culture has given way to “diversity’s” celebration
of each ethnicity’s retaining its identity.A result is that “it is now common for Hispanics to expect the United
States to adjust to them rather than the other way around.”A parallel society is created, with such
national Hispanic organizations as LULAC, MALDEF and La Raza (“the race”).MEChA[1] is associated with the
“Reconquista” movement, which “aims to break the Southwest off from the United
States and reattach it to Mexico or establish it as an independent,
all-Hispanic nation.”Continued loyalty
is given to Mexico, with many Mexican immigrants voting in Mexican
elections.

Asian immigrants to the United States
have, on average, a higher proportion of educated people, higher incomes, and a
presence in American universities considerably larger than their percentage of
the population.They incur few social
problems and seldom take an anti-white view.Nevertheless, Don Nakanishi, who heads the UCLA Asian American Studies
Center, tells how a “pan-Asian” consciousness is coming into existence, melding
into a bloc the immigrants from the otherwise disparate peoples of Asia.This, of course, is similar to the
pan-Hispanic “Latino” solidarity.Oddly,
Taylor treats what he sees as an increasing ethnic consciousness in “the past
few decades” as something rather new.We
say “oddly” because we know that Taylor is fully aware of how during the 1970s
and early ’80s Japanese-American militants arising out of the New Left played
hand-in-glove with the American “liberal” establishment to create the myth (to
which most Americans still subscribe) that the United States incarcerated tens
of thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II.American
Renaissance ran a detailed article on the subject based on this reviewer’s
study that was published in this journal.[2]The episode illustrates a ready willingness
on the part of Japanese-Americans in general (with notable individual
exceptions) to join in ethnic solidarity, support a militantly anti-United
States fiction, and readily (may we say, “greedily”?) to accept generous
“reparation” payments.In light of this,
it seems that Taylor is preferring to understate Asian ethnic consciousness.

When he gets to his chapter on white
racial consciousness, Taylor notes the sharp break in the thinking of white
Americans that occurred in the mid-20th century.“Up until the 1950s, most white Americans
felt the same kind of racial identity that is common among non-whites.”He examines the views of a large number of
luminaries, including Jefferson, Madison, Clay, Monroe, Lincoln, Andrew
Johnson, James Garfield, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, Harding, Henry Cabot
Lodge, Coolidge, Truman, Eisenhower, Samuel Gompers, Walt Whitman and Mark
Twain – even Abolitionists and such whites outside the United States as Cecil
Rhodes, Robert Louis Stevenson and Albert Schweitzer.Without sensing any reason for shame, they proclaimed
the merits of white identity.Jefferson
in 1801 wanted “a people speaking the same language, governed by similar forms,
and by similar laws; nor can we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or
mixture on that surface.”Lincoln, too,
provides an example of the prevailing view, having said during the
Lincoln-Douglas debates that “there is a physical difference between the white
and black races which I believe will for ever forbid
the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”Later here we will consider the “manufactured
mindscape” of the present day, a picture of the world formed out of ubiquitous
propaganda.It is pertinent at this
point to notice Jefferson’s views, and it will be relevant to that later
discussion how those views were misrepresented by the inscriptions placed
inside the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.What appears inside the Memorial are the
words “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these
people [the Negroes] shall be free.”What Jefferson actually wrote, Taylor tells us, added the words “nor is
it less certain that the two races equally free, cannot live under the same
government.”Walt Whitman asked “Is not
America for the Whites?,” which he answered with another question: “ And is it
not better so?”It may surprise
Americans today that even many of the abolitionists “repeatedly expressed
strong disapproval” of intermarriage between the races.

All of this changed sharply in the
1950s.Today, “across the political
spectrum, Americans assert that any form of white racial consciousness or
solidarity is despicable.”During the
years “when segregation was being dismantled… our country seemed to be
embarking on a morally superior course.”“Many Americans,” Taylor says, “believed that reconciliation between
blacks and whites would lead to a new era of inclusiveness for all peoples of
the world.”Then the immigration
legislation in 1965 opened the floodgates to “large numbers of non-Europeans”
and the question was no longer just one of black-white relations.The concept of “diversity” was interjected to
sanctify the burgeoning demographic reality, and in the new moral atmosphere it
became intolerable that anyone should even question the impact on what had
always been a predominantly white, European population.It has developed to the point where President
Clinton “in his 2000 State of the Union speech… welcomed predictions that
whites would become a minority by mid-century.”We cannot be surprised, then, that in late June 2011 the U.S. Census
Bureau announced that a majority of children two and under in the United States
are no longer white.Before his
reelection defeat by a Latina, California Republican Congressman Robert Dornan
said that “if we lose our Northern European stock – your coloring and mine,
blue eyes and fair hair – tough!”

Taylor gives considerable attention to
how the programs and effects of this seismic shift in American life have
worked.Often, what has been done has
had consequences that are diametrically opposite to the original ideal of
racial inclusiveness.About school
busing, Taylor says “one of the ironies of busing is that in many cases, it
drove blacks and whites further apart… Whites fled to the suburbs….”About charter schools, intended to provide
parents more choice, he tells us that “for blacks, this often means
self-segregation and the promotion of racial consciousness.”Magnificent magnet schools were created at
extraordinary expense in Kansas City, Missouri, and Los Angeles, only to prove
spectacular failures.The “diversity”
promoted in universities “sharpens dividing lines,” since “ethnic dormitories
are widespread, as are student clubs for different racial and ethnic groups.”Taylor describes the performance gaps in schools;
the terrible conditions in many schools; the rise of crime in the form of
gangs, drug cartels, kidnapping, shoplifting and employee theft; the impact on
health through HIV/AIDS, obesity, diabetes, cancer, TB, rubella, leprosy,
tapeworms and chagas disease; the closing of hospitals as emergency rooms are
flooded with immigrants; and many cultural changes, such as in musical tastes,
reading habits, use of parks, cockfighting, and the introduction of strange
religions such as Voodoo and Santeria.

Taylor’s calm recital belies the fact
that every so often something really outrageous comes to the reader’s eye.A Maryland judge dismissed charges against a
man accused of raping a seven-year-old girl, on the ground that the defendant’s
“right to a speedy trial” had been violated.What caused the delay?The
difficulty in finding an interpreter for the accused’s “tribal language, Vai,
which is spoken only in Liberia and Sierra Leone.”Bone marrow transplants need to be between
people of the same race, but there are almost no non-white donors.This caused the St. Luke’s Mountain States
Tumor Institute in Boise, Idaho, to announce its closure, for lack of non-white
donors, after the National Marrow Donor Program, caught up in the “diversity”
imperative, ruled in 2008 that “all marrow registries would be required to meet
quotas for minority donors.”And who
received the 1994 La Raza “Chicano of the Year” award?It was Professor Jose Angel Guitierrez of the
University of Texas, “who has said, ‘We have got to eliminate the Gringo, and
what I mean by that is that if the worse comes to the worst, we have got to
kill him.”The 2009 International Latino
Book Award went to the novel America
Libre, which “is set in a near future in which heroic Hispanics slaughter
repulsive whites wholesale on their way to creating an independent all-Hispanic
nation in the American West.”And Taylor
tells how “the United States is now a nation that can produce headlines such as
these [involving about an equal number of blacks and Hispanics]: Baby Dies in
Bucket of Mom’s Vomit; 99-Year-Old Woman Among Rapist’s Victims; Town Stunned
as 8-Year-Old Charged in Two Killings; North Dade Baby Shower Turns Deadly as
Gunfight Breaks Out; Florida Woman Starves Children and Throws Dead Baby into Garbage
Can; Parents Fight Over Which Gang Toddler Should Join.”

When we told of the selective quoting
of Jefferson on the Jefferson Memorial, we referred to the “manufactured
mindscape.”This was a reference to
propaganda (from what can only be called “the American establishment”) drumming
home through constant and ubiquitous repetition the presumed verities of white
self-abnegation and minority ethnic identity.As with all else, the details that Taylor gives remind us of what all is
involved: he tells us that over 8 billion dollars a year are spent on
“diversity training.”Attorneys are
required, in some states, to attend classes in diversity.The media give almost no attention to the
many conflicts that occur between minorities, and the media were silent about
the racial motive that spurred on the “D.C. snipers,” who, shooting from a
snipers’ nest in the trunk of their car, terrorized the United States’ capital
with random killings.Television
advertising is carefully structured to picture “a racial utopia.”(We ought perhaps to notice that the
pervasiveness of ideological propaganda extends to matters other than race, and
so is typical of the mind-controlling relationship the elite chooses to have
with the American public.For what is
now almost forty years, television commercials have exclusively featured perky,
intelligent young women dealing with dullard husbands and boyfriends.With few people noticing, the male is placed
by the prevailing feminist ideology in much the same position as whites are in
on racial matters.)The propaganda is
accompanied by the silencing of opposing views.Taylor tells how “serving [military] officers dare not criticize
diversity for fear it will kill their careers.”“In 2009, the conservative New Century Foundation proposed a simple text
advertisement to several college newspapers: ‘Is diversity a strength?We think not.’… Every college paper rejected
the ad.”

This manufactured mindscape is
accompanied by a number of dubious concepts, which Taylor critiques as he comes
upon them.One is that corporations need
diversity if they are to be competitive in the world market.It is sufficient, in rebuttal, for Taylor to
point to the great success Japanese business, certainly not known for its
racial diversity, has in global trade .Others: that different rates of incarceration arise from justice system
bias, not from different rates of criminal behavior; that more contact between
people of different races leads them to see each other more favorably; that
race isn’t a legitimate biological category; and that people from any race will
adapt to Western culture.An “attractive
argument” is that “immigration brings cultural enrichment,” to which Taylor
responds by pointing out that “the culture of Americans remains almost
completely untouched by millions of Hispanic and Asian immigrants.”He asks, “What has Yo-Yo Ma taught Americans
about China?”

Even though White Identity seems comprehensive, it has by no means exhausted
the subject.It would be unreasonable to
expect that it would.We have noted, for
example, Taylor’s omission of any mention of the mythology spun around the
World War II relocation of the Japanese-Americans from the West Coast.In like fashion, he has refrained from
exploring the myths that have been fashioned around Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Cesar Chavez.(Both King and Chavez have
been the subjects of articles by this reviewer in which I have sought to take a
realistic view of them.[3])Perhaps most significantly, but also
understandable given the task he assigned himself, Taylor does not explain the
role of the Left’s shift after World War II from an alliance with the
“proletariat” to one with ethnic minorities.The “alienated intellectual” within Western society has long sought
allies to lend it strength against the predominant culture, and that search for
allies has in turn given rise to the particular forms that the ideology of the
Left has taken over the past two centuries.This is a story of great importance in itself,[4] and is one that bears
intimately on the matter of “racial consciousness” that Taylor examines; but it
is a much broader subject that couldn’t possibly fit into his book here.

Dwight D.
Murphey

[1]LULAC is the acronym for “League of United
Latin American Citizens.”MALDEF stands
for “The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.”La Raza, as noted above, means “the
race.”MEChA is “the Chicano Student
Movement of Aztlan, better known by its Spanish acronym;” the “group’s motto is
‘for the race, everything.For those
outside the race, nothing.’”

[2]See Dwight D. Murphey, “Issues in the
American Cultural War: The World War II Relocation of the Japanese-Americans,” The Journal of Social, Political and
Economic Studies, Spring 1993, pp. 93-117.The article can be read and downloaded free of charge on www.dwightmurphey-collectedwritings.info,
where it is Article 48 (A48).

[3]See “Understanding Contemporary America: The
Martin Luther King Myth,” in the Fall 2003 issue of this Journal, pp.
325-353.It appears as Article 86 (i.e.,
item A86) on www.dwightmurphey-collectedwritings.info.As to Cesar Chavez, see “If Past is Prologue:
Americans’ Future ‘Guilt’ About Today’s Use of Low-Pay Immigrant Labor,” in the
Fall 2006 issue of this Journal, pp. 339-365.This can be found as item A92 on the web site.

[4]This reviewer has discussed the subject at
length in several years of writing.See
particularly Chapter 18 of his book Liberalism
in Contemporary America, which may be accessed on the web site referred to
in the previous footnote as Book 6 (i.e., item B6).